We all know why Jesus came to earth. He came to redeem the fallen world, to pay the price for our sins, to lead every member of the human family back into friendship with God. We all know that, and we don't usually forget about it.
But we do sometimes forget that Jesus doesn't want to do all the work himself. As St Augustine used to say, although God created us without us, he won't save us without us.
In other words, he has chosen to accomplish his mission of salvation with our cooperation. Every one of us, since the moment of our baptism, has been called by God to be co-missionaries with Jesus Christ.
This is why, in today's First Reading, the prophet Isaiah hears God ask the question: "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" God wants us to participate in his mission of salvation. He gives us a chance to join him in building up the eternal Kingdom. All we have to do is say, with Isaiah, "Here I am! Send me!"
The encounter between Jesus and his first Apostles in today's Gospel gives us the same message. First, Jesus asks Peter to lend him his boat, so that he can have a better podium for addressing the huge crowds. That boat was Peter's livelihood, his life.
Jesus also wants to speak to the desperate, discouraged crowds of today's world from our boats, from the words, deeds, and example of our lives. And then, after the miraculous catch of fish, Jesus invites Peter to follow him and become "fishers of men," co-missionaries.
Christ's mission is to save the world, but he is no Lone Ranger; he has chosen to depend on a volunteer army of co-missionaries – Peter, James, John, and each and every one of us.
This is one of the reasons that we call the Church "apostolic" when we recite the creed.The word "apostle" comes from the Greek for "to be sent out." The first Twelve Apostles were sent out into the world as Jesus' co-missionaries. But they weren't the only ones; the whole Church, us included, is apostolic. Here's how the Catechism explains it:
863 The whole Church is apostolic, in that she remains, through the successors of St. Peter and the other apostles, in communion of faith and life with her origin: and in that she is "sent out" into the whole world. All members of the Church share in this mission, though in various ways. "The Christian vocation is, of its nature, a vocation to the apostolate as well." Indeed, we call an apostolate "every activity of the Mystical Body" that aims "to spread the Kingdom of Christ over all the earth."
Key Requirement for the Mission: Humility
Why did Jesus choose to require co-missionaries to save the world? Not because the job was too much for him; after all, as God he is all-powerful. Rather, because he knew that we needed a mission, a purpose in life that reaches behind the fleetingness of earthly life and plugs us into eternity.
He knows we need a transcendent meaning, because that's how he designed us when he created us "in his own image." We will only find fulfilment if we accept this invitation to be active co-missionaries in the service of Christ's eternal Kingdom. Most of us here today have already accepted the invitation. But we may not be as fully engaged in the mission as we should be. And if that's the case, we may not be experiencing to the full the meaning God wants us to experience.
What could be holding us back? It could be that the key ingredient for our calling to be Christ's co-missionaries is in low supply. That ingredient is humility.
Isaiah only heard God's call and received the grace to accept it after he recognized that by himself, he was unworthy to do so, that he was a man of "unclean lips."
Peter only understood Christ's call and received the courage to follow it after he discovered and admitted his own sinfulness: "Depart from me!" he told the Lord after the miraculous catch, "because I am a sinful man."
And in today's Second Reading, St Paul shows that he too had to learn the lesson of humility: "I am not fit to be called an apostle," he admitted, but then added "by the grace of God I am what I am."
That same grace of God will come to us in this Mass, and it can transform our lives too, in spite of all our limitations – if we are willing to let it.